Page 56 - PORTFOLIO ARAUCO CALANI ALVARO EZEQUIEL

ENGLISH GRAMMAR, TENSES
Past Perfect Continuous Tense

I had been singing

How do we make the Past Perfect Continuous Tense?

The structure of the past perfect continuous tense is:

auxiliary verb auxiliary verb
subject + + + main verb
HAVE BE

conjugated in simple past past participle present
tense participle

had been base + ing

For negative sentences in the past perfect continuous tense, we insert not after the first auxiliary verb.
For question sentences, we exchange the subject and first auxiliary verb. Look at these example
sentences with the past perfect continuous tense:

subject auxiliary verb auxiliary verb main verb

+ I had been working.

+ You had been playing tennis.

- It had not been working well.

- We had not been expecting her.

? Had you been drinking?

? Had they been waiting long?

When speaking with the past perfect continuous tense, we often contract the subject and first auxiliary
verb:

I had been I'd been

you had been you'd been

he had he'd been
she had been she'd been

Page 27 of 38

PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com